Honorary doc for NZ cinema’s ‘rascal of the realm’

Tuesday, May 6,
2014Honorary doc for NZ cinema’s
‘rascal of the realm’

Wellington film
director Geoff Murphy is to receive an honorary doctorate in
literature from Massey University – although he thinks
“rascal of the realm” would be a more fitting
title.

Mr Murphy, 75, is a legend in New Zealand cinema.
He has directed 18 films and is best known for pioneering a
renaissance in New Zealand cinema in the 1980s with three
genre-challenging hits – Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu and
The QuietEarth. While all different, they
were each profoundly New Zealand films, attracted large
domestic audiences and are widely credited with helping
dispel cultural cringe towards domestic films.

Mr Murphy
says he was surprised and pleased to be offered a Doctor of
Literature (Honoris Causa), which he will receive at a
graduation ceremony for Massey’s College of Humanities and
Social Sciences next Wednesday in Palmerston North.

“It’s nice. It’s an honour. I appreciate it. It
means I can put ‘Dr’ in front of my name. It’ll be
good when I’m arguing with the city council,” he says,
with a wry comment on how he has been endowed with honours
recently after three decades of being “conspicuously
ignored”.

Associate Professor Joe Grixti, head of
Massey's School of English and Media Studies, which
nominated Mr Murphy honorary doctorate, describes him as
“a leading pioneer of New Zealand’s new film industry"
who "richly deserves to be honoured for his outstanding
contributions to the national culture and heritage”.

Last year Mr Murphy, who is also a script writer, editor
and musician (a founding member of Blerta), was recognised
as one of New Zealand's 20 greatest living artists, being
named as an Arts Icon by the Arts Foundation. In January he
was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for
services to film.

He says making a feature film and
completing a doctorate are comparable in that they are both
“fantastic feats” that require enormous passion and
faith. “It’s amazing you get it done at all. A film can
be 18 months of hard yakka. It takes over your life. And it
changes in the process of making it. At the end of it you
are emotionally, intellectually and physically
exhausted.”

Murphy grew up in Highbury, Wellington,
lived briefly in Palmerston North as a child and was
educated at St Patrick’s College in Wellington. After a
year studying engineering at Victoria University, he opted
to train as a schoolteacher and taught at Newtown and Lyall
Bay primary schools for a decade.

His first foray into
film was when he worked on The Magic Hammer, based on
a musical he had written for one of his classes. At the
time, he was also part of a local jazz club with a group who
would become the prominent filmmakers of their era,
including Bruno Lawrence, John Charles, Alun Bollinger and
Martyn Sanderson. When they formed the Bruno Lawrence
Electric Revelation and Travelling Apparition (Blerta) and
went on tour in 1971 Mr Murphy was aboard as trumpeter,
filmmaker and explosives expert. The ensemble of musicians,
actors and filmmakers set out to create films based on New
Zealand stories rather than those provided by imported
movies.

He made films throughout the 1970s, including
working with the legendary comedian John Clark on Dagg
Day Afternoon, but his big break came with Goodbye
Pork Pie (1981), a low-budget comedy involving a madcap
journey from Auckland to Invercargill in a stolen yellow
mini, starring Bruno Lawrence and Kelly Johnson. It was New
Zealand’s first home-grown blockbuster and the first Kiwi
film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.

Then came
Utu (1983), directed and co-written by Mr Murphy and
sometimes described as a “Māori western”. It centres on
a New Zealand Wars tale of Te Wheke, a warrior who seeks
revenge (utu) after British soldiers kill his people.
Utu screened outside competition at the 1983 Cannes
Film Festival, and received critical acclaim in the United
States.

A new digitised director’s cut of the film,
Utu Redux, was launched last year, and will be shown
at a special screening in Cinema Gold on the evening of the
graduation. Mr Johnston, who also starred in Utu and
is now a lawyer in Whangarei, will speak at the conferment
of the degree.

The Quiet Earth (1985) a
post-apocalyptic sci-fi story also stars Bruno Lawrence and
is based on a novel of the same name by Dr Craig Harrison,
who lectured in English at Massey University’s Manawatū
campus.

When asked what he makes of the current film
scene locally, he says there are “too many
distractions”. While full of admiration for the phenomenal
global success of the Lord of the Rings blockbusters
(he was second unit director on all three), he does not
regard them as New Zealand films. “They obscure the
view."

Despite his success in the 1980s, he and his
creative cohorts continued to struggle for funding,
prompting him to take up offers of work in Hollywood where
he stayed for the next 12 years to direct a number of big
budget movies, including Young Guns, Under Seige 2
and Dante’s Peak. It was a backward step
creatively, but a necessary one financially, he says.

His
formative years as a film director and encounters with
the-then New Zealand Film Commission left him bemused about
a system employing public servants to assess and administer
funds for creative projects. “You have to ask what
qualities and expertise would a public servant have when
they are looking at what it takes to make a film. You need
people with massive amounts of talent, energy, perseverance,
and you need to be a risk-taker. It’s not the same list as
what a public servant has. They are different
beasts.”

His ultimate message to aspiring filmmakers is:
“Believe in yourself.” Even if it means the powers that
be think you’re a rascal.

Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey
says conferring the honorary doctorate on Mr Murphy is a
fitting way to celebrate the kind of determined, innovative
spirit that Massey University champions. "What Geoff Murphy
achieved through film was to challenge the status quo and to
inspire a fresh vision of New Zealand culture and history
through his compelling, comical and dramatic stories and
characters. His films were remarkable when they were first
made, and they continue to be treasures in our cultural
canon.

“Geoff injected new life and direction into New
Zealand cinema, and gave us new ways of seeing ourselves as
a people. Finding creative new ways to explore, understand
and shape our national identity is a great example and
something I’m confident many Massey students will do in
their chosen fields.” Mr Murphy will receive his
degree at 2.30pm, May 14 at the Regent Theatre, Palmerston
North.

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